Be Polite With Your Books

By Henry Alford

Sept. 19, 2014

What is the etiquette anyway regarding the making of a literary reference in casual conversation? Say, for instance, you want to refer to your newborn’s recent gastric exclamation as an “airborne toxic event.” The allusion is self-contained enough — i.e., your audience will be amused even without knowing its provenance — that you don’t need to footnote it with “DeLillo. ‘White Noise.’ ”

But what if you wanted to be slightly more obscure? What if, on hearing the 15-minute-long recitation of a mutual friend’s catastrophe-upon-catastrophe-upon-catastrophe, you wanted to gush to your narrator friend, “Without feathers! Without feathers!” If the friend is a Woody Allen fan, she may recognize the phrase as Allen’s play on Emily Dickinson’s line, " ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers.” Otherwise, she is likely to be baffled. Thus, it is thoughtful, when making a similarly recherché comment, to pimp the original source. One way of doing this is more polite than others: If, instead of asking, “Have you read much Emily Dickinson?” or “Do you know the Emily Dickinson line about . . . ?” you simply say, “There’s that Emily Dickinson line about . . . " you will flatter your interlocutor. And isn’t that partly why you’re friends in the first place?

Books: As with food and clothing, they’re a commodity that elicits status anxiety for many people, particularly the insecure. And wherever there is status anxiety, there are potential minefields. We need to tread with the lightness of meringue.

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CreditGwendal Le Bec

ON BOOKSPOTTING. Let’s look first at what other people sitting on the train are reading. If, like me, you devote an unhealthy amount of time to bookspotting, then you, too, probably view the advent of the e-reader with mild irritation. It makes our job so much harder. Sure, if the enKindled is sitting right next to us, it’s easy enough to get a quick surreptitious look. But what of the more physically remote? How to include him in our census?

Find a distinguishing feature in the environs, or an obstruction on the landscape, and then stand or crouch such that the e-reader is now between you and said feature or obstruction. Craning your head forward in a gesture of exaggerated curiosity, your cheeks acting as satellite dishes to the feature or obstruction, briefly flit your eyes downward at the e-reader. (“The Hunger Games.” Just as you suspected.) Should the graceful enactment of this maneuver prove too burdensome, I suggest you find a new medium through which silently to judge others, such as footwear or nape hair.

RECOGNITION. On ascertaining the title of the book that another person is reading, the thoughtful individual should avoid blurted reactions that betray either snobbishness or insecurity. The response “A little light reading, eh?” made upon seeing a copy of “Valley of the Dolls” is not particularly endearing; better to stick with “Fun!” or any comment related to Helen Lawson’s wig being flung into a toilet. Additionally, giving voice to spoilers is, of course, bad manners incarnate — viz. your friend who sees you reading “Presumed Innocent” and announces, “The wife did it.” Blammo — dead. The friend, I mean.

GIFTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS. When you recommend or give a book to a friend, it’s best if this act is fueled by your genuine belief that the friend will love the book, rather than by the fact that you loved the book, or the observation that everyone else in the country loves the book so why shouldn’t your friend love it, too? If the first circumstance is your motivator, I would introduce you to the phrase “gift certificate.” If the second circumstance is your motivator, I lead you toward the word “blog.”

Unsolicited books should be given free of any air of obligation or expectation. The best sales pitch I ever got for a loaner was the friend who handed me “Fight Club” and said: “You might love this or you might hate it. My ego is not involved. Explore without constraints.” The worst pitch I ever got came from the friend who wanted to “fill in the gaps” of my history-related ignorance with a learned volume whose title my memory has subsequently left on the side of a hill to die.

After you have given someone a book, let him be the next person to bring it up in conversation. The person who “checks in” to see how you’re doing with that copy of “Austerity Britain” she lent you is a person who should have a licensed professional tell her about Celexa.

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CreditGwendal Le Bec

ON BORROWING. If someone lends you her slightly stained copy of “Wolf Hall” and upon finishing it, you discover it’s now a slightly more stained copy of “Wolf Hall,” what should you do? After all, it wasn’t as if you and the rental agent walked around the book together, placing X’s on a cartoon illustration to denote scratches and dings inflicted by the previous user. Maybe see what kind of reaction you get to the statement “I’m going to buy you a new ‘Wolf Hall’ because this one now bears all the earmarks of pastrami consumption.” Unless it’s an unequivocal “Don’t be silly!” or some such, you should make good on your promise. Or buy her some other book by Hilary Mantel you know she wants. Unanticipated bonus: You are now the proud owner of a pastrami-smelling copy of “Wolf Hall.”

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CreditGwendal Le Bec

RESHELVING. An academic I once met, jealous of the sales figures a colleague was yielding with his popularizations of history, used to walk into bookstores, scoop up any of the colleague’s books in sight, and reshelve them in Humor. While the huge majority of improper reshelving is not nearly this intentional or spiteful, it is all equally bad-mannered. It creates mayhem: The innocent reader or customer who seeks the wry, internal smile that is the result of curling up with a Thurber essay or one of the David Sedaris books will, instead, on reading an exhaustive account of the dimensions of the Boer trenches at the Battle of Magersfontein, come to the conclusion, “These trench dimensions are not terribly amusing.” Unless you are going to take the time to return the book to its correct place on an alphabetized bookshelf, simply lay it horizontally on top of the shelved books, whereupon a librarian or store employee or I will return it to its proper place. We thank you.

Henry Alford is the author, most recently, of “Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That?”